The first one hundred years of photography in South Australia from the late 1840s to the 1940s will be presented for the first time in this extensive exhibition. All the major photographers of the period are represented among the several hundred works on display, including Townsend Duryea, Samuel Sweet, George Freeman, H.H. Tilbrook, Frederick Joyner and John Kauffmann. Their portraits and views will provide a fascinating glimpse into the history and development of South Australia across the century as well as the growth of photography as an art form. The exhibition will feature some of the first photographs acquired by the Gallery in the 1920s and 1930s, as well as many works from the renowned R.J. Noye collection, which was donated to the Gallery by Douglas and Barbara Mullins in 2004.
Entry fees apply

Otto Dix was a leading German expressionist artist who depicted the carnage of the First World War in horrific detail. Displayed in this exhibition will be Dix’s famous 1924 cycle of prints, Der Krieg (The War), a compilation of 51 etchings with aquatint, regarded as one of the great masterpieces of twentieth century art. Dix was equally fascinated and horrified by war and his experiences fighting as a machine-gunner on the Western Front in 1915 had a profound effect on him. Modelled on the devastating war prints by Francisco Goya, Der Krieg cycle remains one of the most powerful indictments of war ever conceived. Full of hallucinatory, nightmarish imagery, Der Krieg continues to resonate powerfully as one of the most haunting documents of man’s inhumanity. War: The Prints of Otto Dix is a National Gallery of Australia Travelling Exhibition.
Entry fees apply

Eighteen years since the establishment of the Rhianon Vernon-Roberts Memorial Collection, this exhibition of innovative contemporary Australian jewellery will showcase the unique legacy created by Rhianon’s parents in memory of their talented young jeweller daughter. The exhibition includes highlights from the Collection – now one of the most significant of its type in Australia – including work by Rhianon Vernon-Roberts herself.

Curated by Robert Reason, Curator of European & Australian Decorative Arts

Anxiety over nature and the environment, cultural traditions and beliefs being eroded, our psychological and spiritual health under threat... The 2008 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art: Handle with Care explores artists’ responses to aspects of contemporary life that have the potential to generate disquiet, to divide communities and incite debate.

Curated by respected Sydney-base curator, Felicity Fenner, Handle with Care examines both in thematic content and in material form, the fragile nature of our relationships with the socio-cultural and natural environments in which we live, through a range of media from paintings to video art.

The Adelaide Biennial began in 1990 and is the flagship visual arts event of the Adelaide Festival of Arts. It is the nation's pre-eminent survey of contemporary Australian art showcasing up?to- the-minute works by established and emerging artists from around the country. All works in the display have been created since the previous Festival of Arts in March 2006. For the first time, none of the Biennial artists has been represented in past Adelaide Biennials.

Curated by Felicity Fenner

Samuel Thomas “S.T.” Gill was one of the first professional artists to work in South Australia and worked prolifically here in the 1840s. Many of his vivid depictions have now become iconic images of colonial South Australia. This exhibition, created for Carrick Hill House, Springfield, will draw on the Gallery’s extensive collection of Gill watercolours, to present a showcase of views of the South Australian landscape.

Curated by Rebecca Andrews, Assistant Curator of Australian Art

Between 1936 and 1940 the Australian public was introduced to a brilliant and exotic company of dancers, productions, stage designs, costumes and music, the likes of which had never been seen or heard here before. The Ballets Russes, Sergei Diaghilev’s dazzling company of artists (presented in Australia by his successor, Colonel Wassily de Basil), revitalised the art form of ballet and had a profound effect on Australian cultural life.

Presented in conjunction with The Australian Ballet’s 2008 Adelaide season, and with the four year national project, Ballets Russes in Australia: Our Cultural Revolution, this special display will provide a glimpse into the important artistic impact the Ballets Russes had on Australian cultural life.

For more information about the Ballets Russes Project and Symposium, visit The Australian Ballet's website

The new display in gallery 8 features a selection of Indigenous and Torres Strait island prints, including works from the Warlayirti portfolio published by Northern Editions in 2006. The large coloured etchings by artists Jumpo Tjapanangka, Eubena Nampitjin, Elizabeth Nyumi and Kathleen Paddoon have a remarkable intensity. The display also includes linocuts by Denis Nona, Butcher Cherel and delicate line etchings by Kitty Kantilla.

For more than forty years, Adelaide collector and Art Gallery benefactor, David Roche has been developing an outstanding, internationally important private collection of eighteenth and nineteenth century French, Russian, German and British decorative arts. Exquisite porcelain, metalware, furniture and other luxury objects, by manufacturers Meissen, Chelsea, Gardner, Bullock, Faberge and more, will go on show for the first time publicly in this special exhibition. The full extent of treasures in this remarkable collection will also be revealed through an accompanying exhibition book, which will be lavishly illustrated.

Co-Curated by Christopher Menz, Director, and Robert Reason, Curator of European & Australian Decorative Arts

The Art Gallery of South Australia is delighted to showcase the inaugural National Indigenous Art Triennial. Travelling from the National Gallery of Australia, Culture Warriors provides a highly considered snapshot of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander contemporary art practice. The work of thirty artists has been selected, representing the diversity of regions around Australia and demonstrating the incredible range of contemporary Indigenous art practice. Works selected for the Triennial have been created within the past three years and include painting on canvas and bark, sculpture, weaving, new media, photo-media, printmaking and installation. Curated by Brenda L. Croft, National Gallery of Australia

SYMPOSIUM
Saturday 21 June 9.30am - 4.30pm
Culture Warriors: National Indigenous Art Triennial
Register by Friday 13 June 2008
Tickets: $80, $50 Members. Inclusive of morning tea, lunch and evening refreshments. Telephone 8207 7050
Book online

The Art Gallery of South Australia is staging the first major exhibition of the Australian tonalist painter, Max Meldrum and his school. Despite being regarded as one of the most authorative teachers and theorists of the interwar period, the breadth of Meldrum’s influence is yet to be fully assessed. With this is mind, in addition to the inclusion of works by his best-known followers such as Clarice Beckett, Percy Leason and Colin Colahan, this exhibition will also demonstrate the lesser-known influence of Meldrum’s ideas on the formative work of Australian modernists, such as Roy de Maistre, Roland Wakelin, Lloyd Rees, Arnold Shore and William Frater.

It is anticipated that this display will provide a long awaited and unprecedented opportunity to reevaluate Meldrum’s affect on the wider development of Australian modernism, and evaluate its bearing on successive generations of Australian painters.

This exhibition will be accompanied by a fully-illustrated comprehensive catalogue and will tour nationally to McClelland Gallery, the National Gallery of Australia, SH Ervin Gallery and the University of Queensland Art Gallery through 2008/09.

Curated by Tracey Lock-Weir, Curator of Australian Paintings & Sculpture

Multiplicity explores the development of prints and multiples in art from the 1960s through to the current day. Drawing on the permanent collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney and the University of Wollongong, the exhibition tracks the history of innovative prints, photographs and objects, from the studio-made to limited editions and the mass-produced, which have been at the core of contemporary art practice. Multiplicity features the work of artists including Andy Warhol, Ed Ruscha, Joseph Beuys, Redback Graphix, Deborah Kelly, Fiona Hall, Ricky Swallow and others.

Curated by Glenn Barkley, Curator, University of Wollongong

Born in Germany in 1877, Hans Heysen emigrated to Adelaide, South Australia with his family at the age of seven and became a popular national figure during his seventy year career. This timely exhibition will be the first comprehensive survey of Sir Hans Heysen’s work, since the Gallery’s own centenary retrospective of 1977. It will mark eighty years since the public was first introduced to Heysen’s pivotal Flinders Ranges landscapes in 1928, and also commemorates the 40th anniversary of the artist’s death.

The Art Gallery of South Australia holds the largest and most representative collection of works by this famous South Australian, including more than two thousand drawings, oils and watercolours bequeathed by the artist himself. Around a hundred works will feature in this landmark exhibition, including many from the Gallery’s own collection, alongside those from major public and private collections from around Australia.

Hans Heysen will tour nationally to the Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery, the Ballarat Fine Art Gallery, the National Gallery of Australia and the Queensland Art Gallery in 2009/10.

Curated by Rebecca Andrews, Assistant Curator of Australian Art